Nader at the Roxie in San Francisco

Here is a video of part of the Nader '08 rally at the Roxie Theatre in San Francisco that I was lucky enough to attend. Enjoy!

Hamas: We are not engaged in a religious conflict with Jews; this is a political struggle

This article originally appeared in the Guardian UK (here). It was written by Bassem Naeem, the minister of health and information in Hamas-led Gaza.

As the Palestinian people prepare to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Nakba ("catastrophe") - the dispossession and expulsion of most of our people from our land - those remaining in Palestine face escalating aggression, killings, imprisonment, ethnic cleansing and siege. But instead of support and solidarity from the western media, we face frequent attempts to defend the indefensible or turn fire on the Palestinians themselves.

One recent approach, which seems to be part of the wider attempt to isolate the elected Palestinian leadership, is to portray Hamas and the population of the Gaza strip as motivated by anti-Jewish sentiment, rather than a hostility to Zionist occupation and domination of our land. A recent front page article in the International Herald Tribune followed this line, as did an article for Cif about an item broadcast on the al-Aqsa satellite TV channnel about the Nazi Holocaust.

In fact, the al-Aqsa Channel is an independent media institution that often does not express the views of the Palestinian government headed by Ismail Haniyeh or of the Hamas movement. The channel regularly gives Palestinians of different convictions the chance to express views that are not shared by the Palestinian government or the Hamas movement. In the case of the opinion expressed on al-Aqsa TV by Amin Dabbur, it is his alone and he is solely responsible for it.

It is rather surprising to us that so little attention, if any, is given by the western media to what is regularly broadcast or written in the Israeli media by politicians and writers demanding the total uprooting or "transfer" of the Palestinian people from their land.

The Israeli media and pro-Israel western press are full of views that deny or seek to excuse well-established facts of history including the Nakba of 1948 and the massacres perpetrated then by the Haganah, the Irgun and LEHI with the objective of forcing a mass dispossession of the Palestinians.

But it should be made clear that neither Hamas nor the Palestinian government in Gaza denies the Nazi Holocaust. The Holocaust was not only a crime against humanity but one of the most abhorrent crimes in modern history. We condemn it as we condemn every abuse of humanity and all forms of discrimination on the basis of religion, race, gender or nationality.

And at the same time as we unreservedly condemn the crimes perpetrated by the Nazis against the Jews of Europe, we categorically reject the exploitation of the Holocaust by the Zionists to justify their crimes and harness international acceptance of the campaign of ethnic cleansing and subjection they have been waging against us - to the point where in February the Israeli deputy defence minister Matan Vilnai threatened the people of Gaza with a "holocaust".

Within 24 hours, 61 Palestinians - more than half of them civilians and a quarter children - were killed in a series of air raids. Meanwhile, a horrible crime against humanity continues to be perpetrated against the people of Gaza: the two-year-old siege imposed after Hamas won the legislative elections in January 2006, which is causing great suffering. Due to severe shortages of medicines and food, scores of Palestinians have lost their lives.

It cannot be right that Europeans in general and the British in particular maintain a virtual silence toward what the Zionists are doing to the Palestinians, let alone supporting or justifying their oppressive policies, under the pretext of showing sympathy for the victims of the Holocaust.

The Palestinian people aspire to freedom, independence and peaceful coexistence with all their neighbours. There are, today, more than six million Palestinian refugees. No less than 700,000 Palestinians have been detained at least once by the Israeli occupation authorities since 1967. Hundreds of thousands have so far been killed or wounded. Little concern seems to be caused by all of this or by the erection of an apartheid wall that swallows more than 20% of the West Bank land or the heavily armed colonies that devour Palestinian land in a blatant violation of international law.

The plight of our people is not the product of a religious conflict between us and the Jews in Palestine or anywhere else: the aims and positions of today's Hamas have been repeatedly spelled out by its leadership, for example in Hamas's 2006 programme for government. The conflict is of a purely political nature: it is between a people who have come under occupation and an oppressive occupying power.

Our right to resistance against occupation is recognised by all conventions and religious traditions. The Jews are for us the people of a sacred book who suffered persecution in European lands. Whenever they sought refuge, Muslim and Arab lands provided them with safe havens. It was in our midst that they enjoyed peace and prosperity; many of them held leading positions in Muslim countries.

After almost a century of Zionist colonial and racist oppression, some Palestinians find it hard to imagine that some of their oppressors are the sons and daughters of those who were themselves oppressed and massacred.

Palestinians had nothing to do with the Holocaust but find themselves punished for someone else's crime. But we are well aware and warmly welcome the outspoken support for Palestinian rights by Israeli and Jewish human rights activists in Palestine and around the world.

We hope that journalists in the west will begin to adopt a more objective approach when covering events in Palestine. The Palestinian people are being killed by Israel's machine of destruction on a daily basis. Nevertheless, we still see a clear bias in favour of Israel in the western media.

The Europeans bear a direct responsibility for what is befalling the Palestinians today. Britain was the mandate authority that handed over Palestine to Israeli occupation. Nazi Germany perpetrated the most heinous crimes against Jews, forcing the survivors to migrate to Palestine in pursuit of safety. We, therefore, expect the Europeans to atone for their historic crimes by restoring some balance to the inhuman and one-sided international response to the tragedy of our people.

Wish You Were Here: Nader Speaks in San Francisco

The truly inspiring political speech has become increasingly difficult to come by. Millions were moved in the 60's by a plethora of activists who challenged people to wake up and become active in their roles as citizens in democracy. But sadly the heyday of empowering speeches has come and gone. Today we have few who can draw a large crowd and even fewer politicians that can draw crowds wearing anything but three-piece executive suits. Sure Barack Obama has many flocking to stadiums to see and hear him speak, has them enraptured with his "post-partisan" rhetoric of change, ecstatic as he promises the dawning of a new day in Washington. Yet I have noticed from the beginning of his camaign that there is a conspicuous lack of substance in Obama's message, that below all the feel-good rhetoric is policy, and that Mr. Obama's policy is based on a perspective and ideology that portends a continuation of militarism, corporatism, and bad government(ism). If history is any judge, it is assured that we will reap what we sow, or, in other words, if we support messianic orators with no progressive policy agenda to speak of, the next president will not work on the peoples behalf. And if the president we vote for is promising a continuation of failed policy, guess what we will get? Lets just say Iraq war veterans will be returning in 2050 - after their 100th tour of duty - to a country without a viable healthcare system.
Well fortunately there are other presidential contenders drawing crowds. Tonight I was lucky enough to get to attend a speech by the only candidate in the race running on no-brainer policies supported by the majority of Americans. What I discovered from this night listening to Ralph Nader - among others - speak at The Roxie theatre in San Francisco, was that talking about issues that matter is so much more inspiring than hearing the same old empty promises of mainstream politicians. Not only inspiring, it was educational. By the time Mr. Nader was half-way done with his speech, there was no way that one could possibly comprehend voting for one of the democrats.
It was not only the die-hards that were moved by Ralph's impassioned arguments for an involved citizenry and real democracy in the U.S. My mom, who I brought along with me for mothers day, conceded while we were walking in to the venue that she liked Nader but "she was going to vote for Obama." By the end of the night she had donated $100 dollars to his campaign and was wondering aloud how anyone could possibly vote for Obama or Hillary, or Nancy Pelosi for that matter, after hearing Nader speak. I think this is a testament to the power of Nader's candidacy. I think that anyone with an open mind, with the best intentions of this country at heart, and willing to listen to Nader, will think hard about voting for anyone else.
Politics has been made into a dirty word as of late, and it is a real tragedy. The cynicism rampant in this country both depresses and makes the possibility of a better future seem ever more elusive. We may not change the world, but to me, just making an effort is enough; making an effort is fulfilling. The first step is to work to hold people (Democrats) accountable, something clearly articulated by Ralph Nader, Matt Gonzalez, and, hopeful Nancy Pelosi replacement, Cindy Sheehan. I hope all my readers will take it upon themselves to learn why bringing accountability to Washington is of the utmost importance, and why voting for Ralph Nader and Matt Gonzalez may be our best hope of accomplishing it.

The Iranian Chessboard

Five ways to think about Iran under the gun, without the American filter in place.

By Pepe Escobar
Reposted from the original Mother Jones article here.

More than two years ago, Seymour Hersh disclosed in the New Yorker how George W. Bush was considering strategic nuclear strikes against Iran. Ever since, a campaign to demonize that country has proceeded in a relentless, Terminator-like way, applying the same techniques and semantic contortions that were so familiar in the period before the Bush administration launched its invasion of Iraq.

The campaign's greatest hits are widely known: "The ayatollahs" are building a Shi'ite nuclear bomb; Iranian weapons are killing American soldiers in Iraq; Iranian gunboats are provoking U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf—Iran, in short, is the new al-Qaeda, a terror state aimed at the heart of the United States. It's idle to expect the American mainstream media to offer any tools that might put this orchestrated blitzkrieg in context.

Here are just a few recent instances of the ongoing campaign: Secretary of Defense Robert Gates insists that Iran "is hell-bent on acquiring nuclear weapons." Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, admits that the Pentagon is planning for "potential military courses of action" when it comes to Iran. In tandem with U.S. commander in Iraq Gen. David Petraeus, Mullen denounces Iran's "increasingly lethal and malign influence" in Iraq, although he claims to harbor "no expectations" of an attack on Iran "in the immediate future" and even admits he has "no smoking gun which could prove that the highest leadership [of Iran] is involved."

But keep in mind one thing the Great Saddam Take-out of 2003 proved: that a "smoking gun" is, in the end, irrelevant. And this week, the U.S. is ominously floating a second aircraft carrier battle group into the Persian Gulf.

But what of Iran itself under the blizzard of charges and threats? What to make of it? What does the world look like from Tehran? Here are five ways to think about Iran under the gun and to better decode the Iranian chessboard.

1. Don't underestimate the power of Shi'ite Islam: Seventy-five percent of the world's oil reserves are in the Persian Gulf. Seventy percent of the Gulf's population is Shi'ite. Shi'ism is an eschatological—and revolutionary—religion, fueled by a passionate mixture of romanticism and cosmic despair. As much as it may instill fear in hegemonic Sunni Islam, some Westerners should feel a certain empathy for intellectual Shi'ism's almost Sartrean nausea towards the vacuous material world.

For more than a thousand years Shi'ite Islam has, in fact, been a galaxy of Shi'isms—a kind of Fourth World of its own, always cursed by political exclusion and implacable economic marginalization, always carrying an immensely dramatic view of history with it.

It's impossible to understand Iran without grasping the contradiction that the Iranian religious leadership faces in ruling, however fractiously, a nation state. In the minds of Iran's religious leaders, the very concept of the nation-state is regarded with deep suspicion, because it detracts from the umma, the global Muslim community. The nation-state, as they see it, is but a way station on the road to the final triumph of Shi'ism and pure Islam. To venture beyond the present stage of history, however, they also recognize the necessity of reinforcing the nation-state that offers Shi'ism a sanctuary—and that, of course, happens to be Iran. When Shi'ism finally triumphs, the concept of nation-state—a heritage, in any case, of the West—will disappear, replaced by a community organized according to the will of Prophet Muhammad.

In the right context, this is, believe me, a powerful message. I briefly became a mashti—a pilgrim visiting a privileged Shi'ite gateway to Paradise, the holy shrine of Imam Reza in Mashhad, four hours west of the Iran-Afghan border. At sunset, the only foreigner lost in a pious multitude of black chadors and white turbans occupying every square inch of the huge walled shrine, I felt a tremendous emotional jolt. And I wasn't even a believer, just a simple infidel.

2. Geography is destiny: Whenever I go to the holy city of Qom, bordering the central deserts in Iran, I am always reminded, in no uncertain terms, that, as far as the major ayatollahs are concerned, their supreme mission is to convert the rest of Islam to the original purity and revolutionary power of Shi'ism—a religion invariably critical of the established social and political order.

Even a Shi'ite leader in Tehran, however, can't simply live by preaching and conversion alone. Iran, after all, happens to be a nation-state at the crucial intersection of the Arabic, Turkish, Russian, and Indian worlds. It is the key transit point of the Middle East, the Persian Gulf, Central Asia, the Caucasus, and the Indian subcontinent. It lies between three seas (the Caspian, the Persian Gulf, and the sea of Oman). Close to Europe and yet at the gates of Asia (in fact part of Southwest Asia), Iran is the ultimate Eurasian crossroads. Isfahan, the country's third largest city, is roughly equidistant from Paris and Shanghai. No wonder Dick Cheney, checking out Iran, "salivates like a Pavlov dog" (to quote those rock 'n roll geopoliticians, the Rolling Stones).

Members of the Iranian upper middle classes in North Tehran might spin dreams of Iran recapturing the expansive range of influence once held by the Persian empire; but the silky, Qom-carpet-like diplomats at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs will assure you that what they really dream of is an Iran respected as a major regional power. To this end, they have little choice, faced with the enmity of the globe's "sole superpower," but to employ a sophisticated counter-encirclement foreign policy. After all, Iran is now completely surrounded by post-9/11 American military bases in Afghanistan, Central Asia, Iraq, and the Gulf states. It faces the U.S. military on its Afghan, Iraqi, Pakistani, and Persian Gulf borders, and lives with ever tightening U.S. economic sanctions, as well as a continuing drumbeat of Bush administration threats involving possible air assaults on Iranian nuclear (and probably other) facilities.

The Iranian counter-response to sanctions and to its demonization as a rogue or pariah state has been to develop a "Look East" foreign policy that is, in itself, a challenge to American energy hegemony in the Gulf. The policy has been conducted with great skill by Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, who was educated in Bangalore, India. While focused on massive energy deals with China, India, and Pakistan, it looks as well to Africa and Latin America. To the horror of American neocons, an intercontinental "axis of evil" air link already exists—a weekly commercial Tehran-Caracas flight via Iran Air.

Iran's diplomatic (and energy) reach is now striking. When I was in Bolivia early this year, I learned of a tour Iran's ambassador to Venezuela had taken on the jet of Bolivian President Evo Morales. The ambassador reportedly offered Morales "everything he wanted" to offset the influence of "American imperialism."

Meanwhile, a fierce energy competition is developing among the Turks, Iranians, Russians, Chinese, and Americans—all placing their bets on which future trade routes will be the crucial ones as oil and natural gas flow out of Central Asia. As a player, Iran is trying to position itself as the unavoidable bazaar-state in an oil-and-gas-fueled New Silk Road—the backbone of a new Asian Energy Security Grid. That's how it could recover some of the preeminence it enjoyed in the distant era of Darius, the King of Kings. And that's the main reason why U.S. neo-Cold Warriors, Zio-cons, armchair imperialists, or all of the above, are throwing such a collective—and threatening—fit.

3. What is the nuclear "new Hitler" Ahmadinejad up to?: Ever since the days when former Iranian President Mohammed Khatami suggested a "dialogue of civilizations," Iranian diplomats have endlessly repeated the official position on Iran's nuclear program: It's peaceful; the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has found no proof of the military development of nuclear power; the religious leadership opposes atomic weapons; and Iran—unlike the US—has not invaded or attacked any nation for the past quarter millennium.

Think of George W. Bush and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the new Blues Brothers: Both believe they are on a mission from God. Both are religious fundamentalists. Ahmadinejad believes fervently in the imminent return of the Mahdi, the Shi'ite messiah, who "disappeared" and has remained hidden since the ninth century. Bush believes fervently in a coming end time and the return of Jesus Christ. But only Bush, despite his actual invasions and constant threats, gets a (sort of) free pass from the Western ideological machine, while Ahmadinejad is portrayed as a Hitlerian believer in a new Holocaust.

Ahmadinejad is relentlessly depicted as an angry, totally irrational, Jew-hating, Holocaust-denying Islamo-fascist who wants to "wipe Israel off the map." That infamous quote, repeated ad nauseam but out of context, comes from an October 2005 speech at an obscure anti-Zionist student conference. What Ahmadinejad really said, in a literal translation from Farsi, was that "the regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the pages of time." He was actually quoting the leader of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini, who said it first in the early 1980s. Khomeini hoped that a regime so unjust toward the Palestinians would be replaced by another more equitable one. He was not, however, threatening to nuke Israel.

In the 1980s, in the bitterest years of the Iran-Iraq War, Khomeini also made it very clear that the production, possession, or use of nuclear weapons is against Islam. Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei later issued a fatwa—a religious injunction—under the same terms. For the theocratic regime, however, the Iranian nuclear program is a powerful symbol of independence vis-à-vis what is still widely considered by Iranians of all social classes and educational backgrounds as Anglo-Saxon colonialism.

Ahmadinejad is mad for the Iranian nuclear program. It's his bread and butter in terms of domestic popularity. During the Iran-Iraq War, he was a member of a support team aiding anti-Saddam Hussein Kurdish forces. (That's when he became friends with "Uncle" Jalal Talabani, now the Kurdish president of Iraq.) Not many presidents have been trained in guerrilla warfare. Speculation is rampant in Tehran that Ahmadinejad, the leadership of the Quds Force, an elite division of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), plus the hardcore volunteer militia, the Basij (informally known in Iran as "the army of twenty million") are betting on a U.S. attack on Iran's nuclear facilities to strengthen the country's theocratic regime and their faction of it.

Reformists refer to Russian President Vladimir Putin's visit to Tehran last October, when he was received by the Supreme Leader (a very rare honor). Putin offered a new plan to resolve the explosive Iranian nuclear dossier: Iran would halt nuclear enrichment on Iranian soil in return for peaceful nuclear cooperation and development in league with Russia, the Europeans, and the IAEA.

Iran's top nuclear negotiator of that moment, Ali Larijani, a confidant of Supreme Leader Khamenei, as well as the Leader himself let it be known that the idea would be seriously considered. But Ahmadinejad immediately contradicted the Supreme Leader in public. Even more startling, yet evidently with the Leader's acquiescence, he then sacked Larijani and replaced him with a longtime friend, Saeed Jalili, an ideological hardliner.

4. A velvet revolution is not around the corner: Before the 2005 Iranian elections, at a secret, high-level meeting of the ruling ayatollahs in his house, the Supreme Leader concluded that Ahmadinejad would be able to revive the regime with his populist rhetoric and pious conservatism, which then seemed very appealing to the downtrodden masses. (Curiously enough, Ahmadinejad's campaign motto was: "We can.")

But the ruling ayatollahs miscalculated. Since they controlled all key levers of power—the Supreme National Security Council, the Council of Guardians, the Judiciary, the bonyads (Islamic foundations that control vast sections of the economy), the army, the IRGC (the parallel army created by Khomeini in 1979 and recently branded a terrorist organization by the Bush administration), the media—they assumed they would also control the self-described "street cleaner of the people." How wrong they have been.

For Khamenei himself, this was big business. After 18 years of non-stop internal struggle, he was finally in full control of executive power, as well as of the legislature, the judiciary, the Revolutionary Guards, the Basij, and the key ayatollahs in Qom.

Ahmadinejad, for his part, unleashed his own agenda. He purged the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of many reformist-minded diplomats; encouraged the Interior Ministry and the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance to crackdown on all forms of "nefarious" Western influences, from entertainment industry products to colorful made-in-India scarves for women; and filled his cabinet with revolutionary friends from the Iran-Iraq War days. These friends proved to be as faithful as administratively incompetent—especially in terms of economic policy. Instead of solidifying the theocratic leadership under Supreme Leader Khamenei, Ahmadinejad increasingly fractured an increasingly unpopular ruling elite.

Nonetheless, discontent with Ahmadinejad's economic incompetence has not translated into street barricades and it probably will not; nor, contrary to neocon fantasyland scenarios, would an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities provoke a popular uprising. Every single political faction supports the nuclear program out of patriotic pride.

There is surely a glaring paradox here. The regime may be wildly unpopular—because of so much enforced austerity in an energy-rich land and the virtual absence of social mobility—but for millions, especially in the countryside and the remote provinces, life is still bearable. In the large urban centers—Tehran, Isfahan, Shiraz, and Tabriz—most would be in favor of a move toward a more market-oriented economy combined with a progressive liberalization of mores (even as the regime insists on going the other way). No velvet revolution, however, seems to be on the horizon.

At least four main factions are at play in the intricate Persian-miniature-like game of today's Iranian power politics—and two others, the revolutionary left and the secular right, even though thoroughly marginalized, shouldn't be forgotten either.

The extreme right, very religiously conservative but economically socialist, has, from the beginning, been closely aligned with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Ahmadinejad is the star of this faction.

The clerics, from the Supreme Leader to thousands of provincial religious figures, are pure conservatives, even more patriotic than the extreme right, yet generally no lovers of Ahmadinejad. But there is a crucial internal split. The substantially wealthy bonyads—the Islamic foundations, active in all economic sectors—badly want a reconciliation with the West. They know that, under the pressure of Western sanctions, the relentless flight of both capital and brains is working against the national interest.

Economists in Tehran project there may be as much as $600 billion in Iranian funds invested in the economies of Persian Gulf petro-monarchies. The best and the brightest continue to flee the country. But the Islamic foundations also know that this state of affairs slowly undermines Ahmadinejad's power.

The extremely influential Revolutionary Guard Corps, a key component of government with vast economic interests, transits between these two factions. They privilege the fight against what they define as Zionism, are in favor of close relations with Sunni Arab states, and want to go all the way with the nuclear program. In fact, substantial sections of the IRGC and the Basij believe Iran must enter the nuclear club not only to prevent an attack by the "American Satan," but to irreversibly change the balance of power in the Middle East and Southwest Asia.

The current reformists/progressives of the left were originally former partisans of Khomeini's son, Ahmad Khomeini. Later, after a spectacular mutation from Soviet-style socialism to some sort of religious democracy, their new icon became former President Khatami (of "dialogue of civilizations" fame). Here, after all, was an Islamic president who had captured the youth vote and the women's vote and had written about the ideas of German philosopher Jurgen Habermas as applied to civil society as well as the possibility of democratization in Iran. Unfortunately, his "Tehran Spring" didn't last long—and is now long gone.

The key establishment faction is undoubtedly that of moderate Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former two-term President, current chairman of the Expediency Council and a key member of the Council of Experts—86 clerics, no women, the Holy Grail of the system, and the only institution in the Islamic Republic capable of removing the Supreme Leader from office. He is now supported by the intelligentsia and urban youth. Colloquially known as "The Shark," Rafsanjani is the consummate Machiavellian. He retains privileged ties to key Washington players and has proven to be the ultimate survivor—moving like a skilled juggler between Khatami and Khamenei as power in the country shifted.

Rafsanjani is, and will always remain, a supporter of the Supreme Leader. As the regime's de facto number two, his quest is not only to "save" the Islamic Revolution, but also to consolidate Iran's regional power and reconcile the country with the West. His reasoning is clear: He knows that an anti-Islamic tempest is already brewing among the young in Iran's major cities, who dream of integrating with the nomad elites of liquid global modernity.

If the Bush administration had any real desire to let its aircraft carriers float out of the Gulf and establish an entente cordiale with Tehran, Rafsanjani would be the man to talk to.

5. Heading down the New Silk Road

Reformist friends in Tehran keep telling me the country is now immersed in an atmosphere similar to the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s in China or the 1980s rectification campaign in Cuba—and nothing "velvet" or "orange" or "tulip" or any of the other color-coded Western-style movements that Washington might dream of is, as yet, on the horizon.

Under such conditions, what if there were an American air attack on Iran? The Supreme Leader, on the record, offered his own version of threats in 2006. If Iran were attacked, he said, the retaliation would be doubly powerful against U.S. interests elsewhere in the world.

From American supply lines and bases in southern Iraq to the Straits of Hormuz, the Iranians, though no military powerhouse, do have the ability to cause real damage to American forces and interests—and certainly to drive the price of oil into the stratosphere. Such a "war" would clearly be a disaster for everyone.

The Iranian theocratic leadership, however, seems to doubt that the Bush administration and the U.S. military, exhausted by their wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, will attack. They feel a tide at their backs. Meanwhile the "Look East" strategy, driven by soaring energy prices, is bearing fruit.

Ahmadinejad has just concluded a tour of South Asia and, to the despair of American neocons, the Asian Energy Security Grid is quickly becoming a reality. Two years ago, at the Petroleum Ministry in Tehran, I was told Iran is betting on the total "interdependence of Asia and Persian Gulf geo-economic politics." This year Iran finally becomes a natural gas-exporting country. The framework for the $7.6 billion Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline, also known as the "peace" pipeline, is a go. Both these key South Asian U.S. allies are ignoring Bush administration desires and rapidly bolstering their economic, political, cultural, and—crucially—geostrategic connections with Iran. An attack on Iran would now inevitably be viewed as an attack against Asia.

What a disaster in the making, and yet, now more than ever, Vice President Dick Cheney's faction in Washington (not to mention possible future president John McCain) seems ready to bomb. Perhaps the Mahdi himself—in his occult wisdom—is betting on a U.S. war against Asia to slouch towards Qom to be reborn.

Pepe Escobar, born in Brazil, is the roving correspondent for The Real News. He's been a foreign correspondent since 1985, based in London, Milan, Los Angeles, Paris, Singapore, and Bangkok. Since the late 1990s, he has specialized in covering the arc from the Middle East to Central Asia, including the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He has made frequent visits to Iran and is the author of Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge, both published by Nimble Books in 2007.

Dockworkers Strike to Stop Iraq War

From Democracy Now!

American Meddling

A regional power is training Iraqi militias and funding extremists. The question is, why is the United States interfering in the affairs of the Iraqi people?

While Iran tries to create the most advantageous outcome in Iraq - a neighboring country which it shares a nine-hundred mile border with - for its own prosperity and security, the United States, Iraq's 7000-miles-away neighbor, is also involved in Iraq - significantly involved - with 150,000 American troops and over 100,000 private contractors on the ground, all trying to get control of an oil-rich region that seems to be slipping from America's mighty stranglehold. 

The United States is: supporting an unpopular government which has very little legitimacy in the eyes of Iraqi's; supporting sunni clan and militia leaders with money and weapons; supporting Shiite militia leaders with money and weapons; fighting other shiite militia leaders with larger popular support (Muqtada Al-Sadr); fighting a "war on terrorism" (and militias not on the US's good side) complete with a sloppy dragnet that has caught thousands of Iraqi's, many, undoubtedly, innocent, and sent them into massive American run prisons for torture (Abu Ghraib is but one example) and indefinite detention without trials. 

So who is the meddling nation then? Well, as Michael M. Gordon of the New York Times (see here), and many other American journalists would have you believe, the meddlers are the Iranians. Never mind the fact that much of the cash and weapons being used, Iraqi on Iraqi, and Iraqi on American, are either American weapons or weapons America failed to secure after their toppling of the Baathist regime. 

The truth is that the New York Times is wrong. The Los Angeles Times is wrong. The Washington Post is wrong. The real meddlers are the American armed forces and contractors, who have come so far to interfere in the lives of people who have done them no harm, and hold up the fig leaf of democracy and rebuilding to hide the shameful nature of the occupation. The Iraqi's want America out. They want the superpower from 7000-miles away to stop its meddling.

Sami Al Hajj Is Freed

In November of 2007 I wrote about the luckless Al-Jazeera cameraman, Sami Al Hajj, who was picked up by the American military while traveling to Afghanistan as a journalist, and illegally detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. As of that writing, Sami Al Hajj had been imprisoned for over five years.

On May 1, 2008, the U.S. government finally released this poor man, after being held for six years. In the last years of his imprisonment, Mr. Hajj health had severely deteriorated, his mental abilities suffered, he began to loose his ability to speak English, and he became, according to his lawyer Stafford Smith, "fixated on his death" - due, in part, to him witnessing other detainees die. Finally, in January of 2007, judging his situation hopeless, Mr. Hajj began a hunger strike. Upon his release in Sudan, Mr. Hajj was rushed to a hospital, as his health was dire. He must wait even longer to see his young son who was only a baby when Mr. Hajj was kidnapped by the American military.

The despicable nature of Mr. Hajj's illegal detention is but another indictment of our political class. As the world condemns America, lawmakers do nothing, the media stays relatively silent, and Bush looks smug.

Not only was Sami Al Hajj's 6-year detention by a nation that flatters itself with claims of moral rectitude a flagrant violation of basic human rights principles, there are also reports that Mr. Hajj was physically abused during his stay at America's murky military complex: Mr. Hajj's lawyer has said that both of his clients knee-caps were broken by prison guards, and that Mr. Hajj was denied cancer medication to treat his throat cancer.

In November of last year when I wrote about Mr. Hajj, I put his imprisonment in historical perspective, remembering how the Russians in Afghanistan also illegally imprisoned thousands of suspected insurgents, denying them habeas corpus as the Americans today have done. Today on the release of Mr. Hajj I think it is also apt to put Mr. Hajj's nonexistent, or illegal and secret, trial into some sort of context, so that understanding what went wrong is made easier.

In 1945, the victorious Allied states set up the Nuremberg Trials in Nuremberg, Germany, location of the infamous Nuremberg rallies, to try Axis war criminals and bring them to justice. While the trials were not perfect, they pushed law to a new international arena that was new, and they tried the accused transparently and based on international principles of a fair trail.

Today, America greedily holds thousands of prisoners in obscure prisons away from the prying eyes of the world. Detainees are tried according to arcane principles of justice, which includes not allowing the accused to see the evidence against them, the consideration of evidence obtained under torture, the possibility of shutting down a trial without explanation, and the lack of a freedom guarantee even when the defendant is found not guilt.

Is the reason for this justice disparity between 1945 and 2007 due to the fact that the purported insurgents or terrorists, accused of, at the most, killing 3000 Americans, are more dangerous and destructive than the men of Nazi Germany who lit Europe on fire, murdering millions of people? Is it a vicious brand of racism that informs this decision? Are white Europeans more worthy of a fair trail than dark skinned people who believe in an alien religion?

The plight that Sami Al Hajj faced, and others still face, in America's illegal prison, has left an indelible mark on America's image around the world, as it should. Unfortunately, what I wrote in November about Guantanamo Bay, and Sami Al Hajj, is just as applicable now, six months later, even after Mr. Hajj has been released: "As Americans we are, unfortunately, all culpable for what has happened here. It is completely unacceptable and it needs to stop. The problem is that as long as American citizens - and presidents and presidential candidates - are not bright enough to realize the implications, then we will continue to violate international law, leaving us with no moral superiority and little pity when we get our comeuppance."

Sami Al Hajj eloquently talks about the inhumanity he experienced at Guantanamo

A report by Al-Jazeera on Sami Al Hajj's release: